haha yea, and I must admit I complain ALOT, but I at least try to get involved in discussions pertaining to things I enjoy or have investment in rather than arguing for the sake of argument
SW has one of the more organized EUs. I hear all the various Star Trek novels aren't canon at all in any form. That makes it hard to take them seriously.
This is again sadly true with Canon, the amount of people who come on to forums saying that continuity is in shreds are not right, not even close, its just hearsay claimed as fact... yea there has been and will continue to be retcon, and in some cases it is acceptable but Star Wars is FAR from convoluted. Just take time to read the source material rather than looking at wookieepedia just to rip it down.
I wouldn't say it is as convoluted as, say, Star Trek. Star Wars canon has a pretty neat system of retcon all things considered, and something either fits, is made to fit, or sits on the different parts of the canon scale.
It isn't so much that canon is convoluted as much as its like the town bicycle. It seems all too easy to go in and retcon entire areas of previous history with a single movie, book, game, and so on. Look at Hoth. A previously almost unknown planet that seemingly nobody bothered with, and now its an elephant graveyard working in a proxy war for resources. This doesn't so much make canon convoluted as much as there is an issue with previously established canon being too easy to rewrite, alter, or override entirely. Think, for example, all the canon that was completely retconned when the prequel trilogy came out. Hell, the attack on the Jedi Temple in SWTOR rewrites all sorts of things in history, not the mention the previous examples of recorded history being deleted by people. Force Unleashed also took a nice swipe at canon.
Maybe convoluted is the wrong word; how about busy? It isn't anywhere near the worst example, but Star Wars Canon isn't so much "in shreds" as it it a dress made of the discarded shreds of other dresses. It functions as a dress, but if you don't like that sleeve you can just rip it off and replace it with a new color.
What canon does the TOR attack on the Jedi Temple break? I thought we got rid of most of the problems of clashes on the Republic's age with the Ruusan Reformation retcons around the time of TPM and AotC.
@adamqd: Not sure if you were directing that at me, but I try not to use wookieepedia hearsay. It just so happened that Hoth bit I was referring to was in fact an open ended-table scrap that got a reverso when I wasn't looking.
*<brevity>
If it wasn't SWTOR or Bioware, it would have been a book, comic, game, etc. I've found that holding any piece of Star Wars lore as precious and untouchable is a pipe dream at this point, since given enough time some author is going to find some way to screw/fix something. I could rage for hours on what SWTOR did to Revan, TSL, and so on but what Bioware is doing only scratches on the ruins that the Kotor Comics left behind.
Good point.
Tales of the Jedi explains that he was named after the planet, so Hoth was named and known long before Jedi Master Hoth.
Oy. Back to the drawing board I guess. Another casualty of subtle retcon. Suppose it *could* be worse.
If you look at the Dev Tracker on Lucasforums, Drew Karpyshyn made a post on the TOR boards clarifying that Hoth was indeed named at least as early as TOR, and that it wasn't named after Lord Hoth. Lord Hoth was possibly named after the planet, but it's not for sure. Check his post for more.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2993503#edit2993503)
@adamqd: Not sure if you were directing that at me,
btw this is not directed at anyone in particular, just a chip I had to brush off my shoulder when Wookieepedia was mentioned :)
No bud :)